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[simonthedwarf]

I'd call the original X-COM a masterpiece, but I'd be hesitant to call the new X-COM one until I have a chance to play it for myself.

I went to the demo yesterday, and now I'm conflicted.  They are limiting your squad to 6 soldiers (four at the outset) and the soldiers have classes (i.e., sniper, heavy, etc.) and receive special abilities as they level up.

One of the things I liked about original X-COM was that you could be fluid in how you equipped your soldiers depending on the mission--there were thousands of possible strategies and loadouts, and hundreds of successful ones hidden among the failures.  Here, it seems like they want to force you to use _their_ strategy.  Which isn't a particularly good one . . . which is why (at least in the build we saw) you can kill a muton with just one shotgun blast.

I beat Terror from the Deep on Superhuman, and it took some hella out-of-the-box thinking in order to do so--the sort of strategies that I don't think are going to be possible in this game

I am a veteran of a thousand x-com games as well. I was fighting in the '39 of enemy unknown and the '43 of x-com apocalypse. Games these days just aren't challenging your intellect anymore. X-com challenged your intellect. Okay you didnt need to know physics but you had to manage your stuff intelligently. You always felt like "reload save, captain america just got his face shot off by a saucer". Finally getting a commander rank soldier with epic reaction shots and psionic ability felt really good and a real ingame accomplishment.

Every aspect of the game was very rounded. Base building, economy, choosing missions and looking at graphs to decide which countries to send random interceptor patrols to. Perhaps the only weakness of it was how strong psionic attacks were (for both sides) since I remember one save where I killed an entire alien base mindcontrolling them from the initial lift.

A lot of people diss apocalypse, but it's production was apparently cut a bit short. Apocalypse is what they should remake. The cityscape would be perfect for a 3d world. ufo enemy unknown is the definitive classic in retro terms, but apocalypse was touching bases on the next development of the series. The air combat was much more challenging, research was deeper and had more reward beyond just getting the plasma rifles.  You had a seamless choice between real time and turn-based. One flaw was the fact that distruptor weapons didn't require ammo - this was bad because managing elerium in UFO:EU was a noticeable aspect of the game.

If anyone have played the UFO afterlight/aftershock series I highly recommend it. Its made by some russian developer and although it can be very annoying to play the "mook" missions it was just like playing xcom ue or apocaplypse.

[Chthonic]

I wouldn't look at a demo and say that they are necessarily constraining you to just the one strategy that works right away, as they may have many more strategies planned that just aren't working enough to show off at a demo.

The question from the audience was, "Will we see larger squads on the battlefield?"  The answer from the rep was, "We're going to start you off with four, but later that will increase to six." 

He gave the same reasons provided upthread about how moving too many units around gets tedious, and then went on to say how playing this game makes you better at original X-com and after playing their demo for XCOM you can do the original X-com missions with only four soldiers.  Which seems fair enough until you remember that because of the difficulty bug X-com can only be played on easy anyway, and when you sit down to start a game you're splatting sectoids and floaters with pistol shots.  Four soldiers is trivial in the first one, especially at the outset.

In terms of strategies, I'm much more in favor of game makers providing players with a starting point or some tools and allowing players to take those and run with it (this is why I like DF, probably more than is healthy).  When you have only four soldiers available and four classes to work with, it starts feeling like you're sending your mage, fighter, cleric, and rogue back into the dungeon for the umpteenth go.  And there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't really feel like X-com.

A lot of people diss apocalypse, but it's production was apparently cut a bit short. Apocalypse is what they should remake.

I really enjoyed Apocalypse, and I would love to see a remake.  I think with this XCOM they are making some aspects a little bit deeper in the direction that Apocalypse took it--there's going to be more diplomacy with your council of funding nations, and you'll get to sit in on interrogations of alien subjects, for example.  I'm not sure if they'll go for that, though--I asked whether if this does well we'll see a remade Terror from the Deep, and the guy started hemming and hawing about how to make it immersive it had to look and feel like the real world.  Sigh.

[simonthedwarf]

My take on demo/final product is that it can only get WORSE than the demo, not significantly better. I can't ever remember reading a review which went opposite in a positive direction of a early playtest/demo, generally if a demo holds promise it can either fulfill what was basically expected of it, especially as a sequel, or it can dissapoint. Kinda retard logic but try to think about what i'm saying it sorta makes sense intuitively for me.

Usually a Lot Of Budget also goes into early game sequences because it is what they call in advertising "the hook". And demos usually show early game!

Now what they need to freaking make is dungeon keeper 3 or a new, awesome version of Syndicate. (Original was best the 2nd one kinda sucked) Now that would be the absolute shit. That or transport tycoon. (epix!)

But back to xcom, imo the original formula has so many avenues that really werent so deeply explored that if you're trying to feed off the xcom name at least have the decency to make a true spiritual successor and don't try to add your own trashy ideas. Art is art as a whole you can't just take Mona Lisa's teeth and call yourself Da Vinci.

So I hope they can make some recurring soldiers (to drive story probably) but still have the monthly recruits thing with large selection of soldiers and sifting through their stats. Perhaps some "main" characters in the game could be introduced by cut-scenes showing their job interview for the x-com programme where their motivations and background was explained through dialogue between the agent and the person doing the interview.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, if you're looking at remakish things, I remember a Game Boy Advance game that was sort of like what they are making now, called Rebelstar: Tactical Command, which was like X-Com, but with only 8 characters at a time, named characters, a linear plot, scripted battle types, and no replacement troops, so you had to reload or restart the mission until you could do it with 0 casualties. 

They also had an experience system where you gained 3 stat points every level, but which 3 stats were random, so you'd have to just reload until your riflemen got an accuracy point, because by the mid-late game, the basic sniper rifle was basically more powerful than any of the alien rifles, and you could shoot accurately to the limits of sight range with a snap shot, and it was even effective against saucers.  (Of course, if saucers so much as SEE you in the open, you're basically dead, so that's pretty much the only way to take one down aside from a heavy weapon ambush.)

It wasn't as in-depth as the original X-Com, but for a game boy game you could take with you, it was pretty impressive. 


There's also Silent Storm and Hammer and Sickle, which let you do some pretty crazy things with destructible environments and actually fairly cunning AI.  (Guard a stairwell with a machinegunner?  The AI won't rush up those stairs, but will hide in the floor below so your sniper can't pick them all off.  But then, just stay quiet and listen for where they are converging, and plant C4 on the floor/roof above them, and blast a hole, and while they are still stunned, toss grenades into the hole... suckers!)

The only problem is the game had a difficulty curve that approached near infinite slopes - the first couple levels of Hammer and Sickle were basically "reload until you get really, really lucky", the middle levels were fairly easy once you had actual skills and specializations and could hit a target more than 2 tiles away with over 50% accuracy. (The game would literally miss with a pistol at a range of one tile, when the animation would put the hand of the character inside the torso of the target, and in order to miss, the character would have to be animated literally firing the gun backwards to get it pointing in a direction that wouldn't hit the target.)  The final level, however, has you protect a target that dies in one shot and is standing right in front of 20 enemies with machine guns, while you are 80 tiles away.  It's like the game is just f***ing laughing at you.

[Finn]

If you like XCOM, and you've proven by playing DF that you can handle games that require a little care and feeding to run, try googling  UFO: Alien Defense.

Finn